Toshiba Portégé Z835-P330 Ultrabook Review

Article Index

Far Cry 2 & Left 4 Dead 2 -- Gaming Performance

Ultrabooks aren't really built for gaming, but you know what they say about all work and no play. Even though the Z835-P330 is rocking integrated graphics, we ran a couple of low level game tests to see what it's capable of.

Far Cry 2 and Left 4 Dead 2

DirectX 10 Gaming Performance

FarCry 2

Like the original, FarCry 2 is one of the more visually impressive games to be released on the PC to date. Courtesy of the Dunia game engine developed by Ubisoft, FarCry 2's game-play is enhanced by advanced environment physics, destructible terrain, high resolution textures, complex shaders, realistic dynamic lighting, and motion-captured animations. We benchmarked the test systems in this article with the FarCry 2 benchmark tool using one of the built-in demo runs recorded in the "Ranch" map.

No surprises here. The Z835-P330 did manage double digits in our Far Cry 2 benchmark run, but was still well short of playable on High Quality settings at 1280x720. A faster processor would have given framerates a boost, but wouldn't have been a game changer, so to speak. If Far Cry 2 is your time killer of choice, you'll have to dial back the eye candy and/or drop the screen resolution.

{Left 4 Dead 2

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Left 4 Dead 2, though it has reasonably good visuals, is a bit easier on the graphics subsystem. This was a game engine that the Asus UX21 Zenbook could handle a bit better as well. Let's see how Toshiba's ultralight fairs.

Things are a bit better in Left 4 Dead 2, even on the Z835-P330's native resolution. We managed playable framerates that were mostly smooth, and that's with High Quality settings and 4xAF.